


In A Kinder Light

by Sour_Idealist



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/M, Kinkwinter, Sleepy Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-14
Updated: 2018-11-14
Packaged: 2019-08-23 12:22:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16618874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sour_Idealist/pseuds/Sour_Idealist
Summary: In a hayloft on the Menagerie Coast, Nott offers Caleb a little bit of help, and he helps her out in turn.





	In A Kinder Light

**Author's Note:**

> So, obviously, I did not manage to keep up with writing an average of 1300 words a night for Kinktober. Whoops. That said, I did like a lot of the ideas I had, I liked a lot of the stories that got stuck in progress, and I think it helps me to have a list of prompts to go down. So I'm upgrading it to Kinkwinter, finishing the stories that got started, and going to hit the other days' prompts until I have thirty-one ficlets and be damned to time. And maybe I will learn not to let stories languish finished on my hard drive forever, either. 
> 
> This one is written for 'day' 29, sleepy sex.
> 
> Like every other story I write about this ship, (and, to some degree, every story I write about Nott at all), it is dedicated to everyone who has ever felt too ugly or too monstrous or too strange to deserve something, and to everyone who has ever felt unworthy of being loved.

The first thing Nott realized, waking up, was that at last she couldn’t smell the sea. 

She could smell smoke and human-sweat, which meant Caleb curled in behind her. She could smell straw and sawdust, sleeping horse and well-dried dusty hay. But not, for the first morning in far too long, the horrible swallowing sea.

“Mmm,” she murmured, stretching a little. Caleb made a soft, half-awake snuffling sound in answer behind her. The inn had been short on beds, and the innkeeper wary of her, and Nott had decided to solve two problems at once and offered to take the hayloft. The others had tried to join her, especially Jester, but Nott’s persuasiveness had won everyone but Caleb over in the end. Well, partly Nott’s persuasiveness and partly the innkeeper’s daughter, who had glared at her father and fetched down a pile of spare blankets that weighed more than Nott did. 

It had been a good way to sleep. The straw was deep, the horses calm, and the blankets were heavy and Caleb warm. It was the best night’s sleep Nott had had in too many long sea-marked months.

Not quite ready to wake up yet, she rolled over, burying her face in Caleb’s chest. The movement disturbed a rustle of straw and brought her hip brushing against what was a frankly notable morning erection. His breath caught. “Oh, whoops.” She shifted her weight, putting a little space between their hips.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, lips smushed against her hair. She blinked one eye open; he was flushed, with embarrassment or warmth or both.

“Well, it’s natural,” she mumbled back, patting vaguely at his hair. She let her eyes fall closed again, muffling a yawn. “‘ve noticed before. Nothing to be embarrassed about, right?” 

He shook his head, straw rustling. “Dream,” he said, half-lost in a yawn. Nott forced one eye back open, interest caught.

“Oh?” she said. “About… anyone?” Carefully, she tried, “Astrid?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head again. It dragged the stubble of his beard along her forehead, scratchy and comfortable. “Nobody. Just… being touched.” Sleep made his accent thicker, jumbling the consonants together. 

“Oh.” Nott’s eyelids seemed half stuck together. She blinked, blinked again, trying to get them comfortable open. The light in the stable loft was gray and rose, dawn-touched and dust-filled. It lit Caleb’s face, limning his hair; lit the heavy blankets piled high around them both. He was beautiful, curled into this little warm and dreamlike space with her. Sleep softened the lines around his mouth, the ones that worry had etched so deep. If she could, he would always look like this, content and unafraid. She managed it so rarely. And it would take the slightest shifting of her hip to feel the length of his cock nestled against her hip again.

“Do you want me to help you out with that?” she asked, nodding vaguely down. Caleb blinked, and blinked again, his eyelashes a pale and lovely flutter against his cheek.

“ _ Bitte?” _

“I don’t actually speak Zemnian, Caleb,” she reminded him.

“I -- what was that?” he tried again.

“Nothing, it was a stupid idea.” Nott shook her head, trying to wriggle away a bit without letting cold air under the blankets. “I mean, look at me, why would you --”

His arm tightened around her shoulders. “Nott,” he said, sleep-rough, and nothing more.

“Just -- forget I said anything,” she managed, ears burning. “Why don’t we just go back to sleep?”

“No.” He shifted, tugging her closer to him; not pulling their hips together, just cradling her head against his chest. “It’s not you. It’s not because of you, it’s not -- it’s not because you are ugly. Please, never think you are ugly. It’s -- I am a  _ garbage  _ man, Nott. I shouldn’t...”

“Hush, now,” she interrupted, reaching up to stroke his hair. She was close enough to hear his breath catch as she did it. “Don’t say that, Caleb, you’re not. You’re not, and I told you, I’m going to keep telling you. I’m going to keep telling you, until you listen. And if you -- if you want me to touch you, you should let me.” She lifted her head, pushing his hair back; she fought back another yawn. This wasn’t a conversation to have sleep-fogged and muddled; this was a conversation to have about books and ink and paper, not about touch. But -- here they were, somehow. “You deserve good things, Caleb. I want to give them to you. Please, let me give them to you. If you want them.” Her hands cradled his face, her claws half-buried in his hair. 

He turned his head, his long exhale brushing her palm. “I don’t,” he whispered. “I don’t.”

“Caleb.” Carefully, she shifted, slipped one hand under his coat to cup his hip. Her fingers were a tiny span against the jut of bone. His breath hitched, still close against her other palm. “Do you want me to touch you?” Her voice shook, a little, out of control and small and lost. She’d meant to be calm.

Slowly, eyes screwed shut, he nodded against her hand. “Yes,” he whispered. “Yes.”

Nott took a deep breath: in through the nose, out through the mouth. Caleb, smoke and human-sweat. “Well, that’s settled,” she said, and snapped open the button on his trousers. 

She would think, later, about what this did to her careful categories of feeling, what it did to the explanatory labels and lines she’d drawn around the need to see him safe. Now there was sleep still crusted at the corner of her eyes, and Caleb soft and warm and curled around her in the straw of the hayloft, and Caleb’s cock a solid velvet weight in her hand. She’d half-expected that him to have softened as they talked, but he was as hard as her hips had found him. Maybe it was a quirk of bodies, of humans versus goblin or of him in particular; maybe it was the work of long and lonely years, that the thought of being touched at all would keep the blood rushing close under his skin.

She let her eyes fall closed, let herself fall into the motion: up and down, up and down, grip firm but not too tight. Easy, simple. The soft folds of foreskin under her hand, pulling back more and more with every stroke. Caleb’s breath hitching against the top of her head. The trace of her thumb over the head, sticky-wet and tender. Up and down, up and down, stroke by steady stroke. Caleb’s arm around her shoulders, holding her tight. Up and down, up and down, dreamlike. Her thoughts gone fuzzy at the edges, lost in the motion, in scent and skin. Pubic hair brushing against her knuckles, and Caleb making soft low noises in her ear. It was hard to believe in the world beyond the hayloft, in times other than this soft safe dawn, in anything other than the two of them, here, now. 

She wasn’t prepared for his grip to shift, hitching her closer to him. His thigh slid in between hers, grinding against her in a slow unfocused pressure that stole her breath out of her lungs. It felt like waking all over again, waking to the warmth that had built up in her belly and the heavy wetness slicking down her thighs. It had been there, aware but unregarded, and lost in sleepiness and touching him, she hadn’t second-guessed it, hadn’t tried to pin it down. Now here she was, clamping her thighs around his leg, hot like she hadn’t been in years. Caleb let out a raspy groan, his breath close against her neck.

“I can feel you,” he whispered. “You’re --” and then a choked-off noise, his grip spasming on her hips. Wetness welled between her fingers, slick and satisfying; she worked him through it, her own immense ears swiveling to catch every little sound, every soft inhale as he tried to catch his breath. Slowly, awkward in the space between them, she managed to get her fingers up to her mouth, sucking his come onto her tongue. No sense wasting protein, any more than there was any point in adding new embarrassing stains to the front of his coat. And she wanted to taste him. 

“Nott…” Ragged, breathless. He shifted, clutching her close, and the motion dragged his thigh against her again, making her whine. “You’re wet,” he whispered. 

“Nngh!” It was a humiliated noise, half-strangled; she buried her face in his shoulder, ears pinned flat to the sides of her head. Caleb fumbled at her cheeks, careful not to crush her ears, but determined: he cupped her face in his hands, eased her head back to make her look at him. He looked at her like he looked at a new book, at something magic and yet-unidentified: something to study. (Something wondrous.)

Slowly, deliberately, he moved his leg, an awkward hitch that dragged slow pressure against every swollen inch of her cunt. Nott whimpered, ragged and undeniable. It felt warm like good whiskey, warm like sunlight, better than any physical thing she’d ever felt in her life.

Caleb didn’t say anything. He just pressed their foreheads together and reached his hand between them, and rubbed three fingers in a rough small circle over her clit. She wailed, clamping her thighs around his hips.

“Good?” he asked, low and rough.  _ Guut,  _ the Zemnian thick and darling on the words.

“What are you talking about, of course it’s good,” she panted, breathy and lost. “You’re always good, Caleb, always, I --  _ mm _ !” Another tight circle of his fingers, another hot shiver running through her. She clung to him and breathed him in, smoke, sweat, old paper, a faint whiff of molasses where he’d smudged some on his coat. The circling pressure of his fingers, hot and wanting, making her rock down in search of more. He made no attempt to undress her -- and gods, she loved him for it -- just kept rubbing at her until the pleasure burst, heat spilling out of her in a wet gush and in trembling thighs and in the pulse of her body against his hand. For one wild moment, arms locked around his shoulders, her back arched, her breath wild in her throat, she didn’t feel ugly. She felt made of light. 

It passed. She collapsed, not that there was much to collapse to when they’d both been curled on their sides all this time -- but still, it was something, like a rope unknotted. All the tension in her body falling slack at once. She buried her face in his shoulder again, and he made no mood to stop her. The fingers of his left hand stroked a gentle pattern on the nape of her neck; he made no move to free his other hand from in between her legs.

“You didn’t -- you didn’t have to do that,” she whispered. “I just meant to, you know, help you out a bit, you didn’t have to --”

“Nott, shut up,” Caleb interrupted. His thumb traced at the nape of her neck, at a stray strand of hair; he shifted to thumb along her jawline, too. “You are… I did not think I would be lucky enough to have anyone like you again. To care for anyone again the way I… care for you.” His voice cracked. “It’s dangerous. To me.” 

“Danger -- Caleb, I would  _ never  _ hurt you,” she promised, struggling to sit up; he didn’t seem to want to let her go. “Never, ever, absolutely not. I promise you, I am going to keep you safe.”

“I know.” He tugged her a little closer, burrowing them both a little deeper into the hay. “Forget I said anything, ja? And how about we both sleep in a little longer. I know those slugabeds back at the inn will not be awake yet.” 

“Mmm, well...” She let him, wriggling herself back under the tangled blankets. “Whatever you need to do, Caleb, I’ll help you. I hope you know that. I don’t intend to… to stand in your way.” 

“Mmm.” It was less a sound than a slow breath pressed against her cheek. The pause stretched out between them, both their breathing slowing, before she heard him whisper, “You are the greatest blessing I never deserved.” 

“Whaaat, me?” She chuckled, shaking her head slightly, wrapping her arms a little closer around him. “Don’t be silly, Caleb. You deserve -- all kinds of good things. Much better than this.” 

“Oh…” A yawn caught the end of the word. “I do-o-aahn’t think so.” Another yawn. He dropped a soft, sleepy kiss to her forehead, and she gave up the debate, nuzzling up against the scratchy fuzz of his cheek. 

It wasn’t an argument to be won this morning. For now, she closed her eyes, letting the dawn wash over her, and drifted back to a gentle sleep, loose-limbed and for once at peace. 


End file.
